My research centres upon Australia’s colonial past and its legacies in the present. Since 1997 I have explored colonial visual cultures, seeking to understand how images have shaped ideas and debates about race, identity and culture that persist into the present. I have worked in the heritage sphere for over twenty-seven years, including as convenor of an inaugural heritage program at La Trobe University. Between 2011-2017 I led the Australian Research Council-funded project Globalization, Photography, and Race: the Circulation and Return of Aboriginal Photographs in Europe (DP110100278) in partnership with four major European museums (the University of Oxford’s Pitt Rivers Museum, the Cambridge University Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, the Musée de Quai Branly in Paris and the Wereldculturen in Leiden) and Aboriginal communities.

Key research

Current research focuses on the emotions aroused by visual imagery, including antislavery in Australia, magic lantern performances, and visualizing violence in Australian history.

(In press) ‘Popularising Anthropology: Elsie Masson and Baldwin Spencer’, in Lynette Russell and Leigh Boucher (eds) The British Association for the Advancement of Science: Anthropology and Historical Legacies. (Accepted June 2016)

(In press) ‘“Visual history at its best!”: UNESCO’s 1951 Human Rights Exhibition in Australia’, in Gareth Griffiths and Philip Mead (eds), The social work of narrative: human rights and the literary imaginary. Ibidem-Verlag. (Accepted 8 September 2015)

2017 ‘Photography and History’ in Kirsty Reid and Fiona Paisley (eds) Approaching the Imperial Archive: Sources and Methods in Histories of Colonialism, Routledge Studies in Cultural History, New York.

2016‘Introduction: Throwing Dust in the Eyes of the People’, Governing West Australian Aboriginal People: Section 70 of WA's 1890 Constitution, Special issue of Studies in Western Australian History, Vol 30: 1-8.

2016‘Christian Heroes? John Brown Gribble, Exeter Hall and Anti-slavery on Western Australia’s frontier’, Governing West Australian Aboriginal People: Section 70 of WA's 1890 Constitution, Special issue of Studies in Western Australian History, Vol 30: 59-72.

2015 ‘Walter William Thwaites and Aboriginal people at Mt Gambier and New Norcia: extinction or the future?’ Ways of Telling (Rosendo Salvado: Commemorating 200 Years 1814-2014.) Special Issue of New Norcia Studies 22: 12-21.